Electrolytes in the Aftermath

Maya stared at the orange prescription bottle on her kitchen counter. Vitamin D, the doctor had said. For the bone-deep exhaustion that had settled in three months ago, around the time Richard stopped coming home.

The storm outside rattled the windowpanes. Lightning fractured the sky—violent, beautiful, the kind that makes you believe in something larger than yourself. She used to think that was love. Now she knew better.

Her iPhone buzzed against the granite countertop. Richard's name lit up the screen, unexpected as a slap.

"I left my vitamins," he'd text. "The orange bottle. Can you mail them?"

Maya felt something unhinge in her chest, not quite pain, not quite relief. Just the strange recognition that their entire marriage had been reduced to this: forwarding a bottle of supplements through the postal service.

She'd been taking them religiously, the orange capsules glowing like small suns in her palm every morning with breakfast. She'd thought they were helping. She'd thought a lot of things were helping.

The lightning flashed again, illuminating the apartment she couldn't afford on her own. She'd be selling it soon. Another ending, another box to pack.

Her fingers hovered over the phone. She could reply. She could ask why he'd only left the vitamins. She could tell him she'd been taking them, that they'd become part of her morning ritual, that she'd feel strange without them.

Instead she watched the storm through the window, the way the lightning transformed everything for split-seconds at a time. The world became something else entirely—sharp, luminous, utterly changed.

She thought about how Richard had looked at her that last morning, like she was something he used to understand but couldn't quite remember anymore. How she'd looked at him the same way.

Maya took the orange bottle from the counter, shook two capsules into her hand, and swallowed them without water. Then she typed a single word and hit send.

"Done."

The phone went dark. The lightning flashed. And for the first time in months, she felt exactly as awake as she needed to be.